Are SNES Games Coming to Nintendo Switch Online?

As you know, the Nintendo Switch doesn’t exactly have an eShop. Instead, the monthly charge you pay to access the console’s online service gives you access to a wide assortment of ‘free’ games, with you getting access to a whole library’s worth rather than just whatever ones you personally bought.

It’s a neat enough setup, and in theory one that could be a major selling point for the system. However, due to the games only being NES titles, the service isn’t anywhere near as interesting as it could be, with the value added by the likes of Ice Climber and Urban Champion being… limited compared to modern titles.

But it seems that may now be about to change. That’s because (as a dataminer named Kapu mentions on Twitter), there are text strings in the code for the system indicating support for numerous SNES games is due down the line. Here’s the Twitter conversion about it with the source code available:

I was finally able to look around NES Online's strings a bit myself and noticed the sheer amount of SNES games planned.Here's a list for you folks out there:#NintendoSwitch

It’s an impressive list of titles, and one rather similar to the SNES Classic line up. So it seems Nintendo has plans to take the line up from that system and port it over to the Switch for its online service too.

Well, we hate to speculate, but part of us wonders if they’ll be some of the same systems released on the Wii U’s Virtual Console. After all, that did get N64, GBA and DS games released for it, so perhaps some of those will be heading to the Switch’s online service in a future update. Would certainly be good if so, imagine if Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Mario 64 and other such games were available for your monthly Switch Online fee. That’d certainly make us feel more tempted to pay for the service.

Still, it’s all up in the air right now. It could be N64 games, it could be Game Boy games, or it might be neither. There’s no way to know at the moment.

But what do you think about it? Do you think the Switch Online library could expand to include N64 or GBA games alongside NES and SNES ones? When do you think SNES games themselves will be added to the lineup?